The Walking Dead Renewed For Season 8 By AMC

The Walking Dead is one of the highest-rated programs on not just cable, but also television in general. Although ratings do seem to have peaked for the show, it is still completely crushing the competition. Which is why it is not a huge surprise that AMC would renew the drama for an eighth season. What is a bit more exciting is that the network has made the decision to renew the zombie drama for Season 8 before Season 7 has premiered.

AMC announced today that The Walking Dead will be returning for an eighth season at the network. Per usual, 16 episodes will be produced for the new season of the drama. Episodes of The Talking Dead will also air the night of each new episodes. The President of AMC, Charlie Collier, jokingly referred to the renewal as the network choosing, "eenie, meeny, miney, more." More, indeed. Season 8 will finally see The Walking Dead hit the 100th episode milestone.

Ratings for The Walking Dead have been wow-worthy for years now. While the numbers dropped a little during Season 6, the show has still been the #1 series in the 18-49 demographic through the past four TV seasons, which is an impressive feat. More than 14 million total viewers tuned in for the Season 6 finale, and AMC is expecting similarly large numbers for the Season 7 premiere this Sunday. The Season 6 premiere saw 14. 6 million total viewers tune in, after all, and that number jumped to more than 19 million after Live+7 ratings.

Yes, the news comes just six days before AMC is set to launch the seventh season of The Walking Dead. Anticipation for the drama is pretty high at this point, as the last season ended on a cliffhanger of epic proportions. After the group had the misfortune to meet Negan, the brand new leader ultimately opted to take his bat, Lucille, to at least one lead character's head. Thanks to AMC being pretty darn good at marketing itself, we don't know who actually died during the moment, and excitement over the show's return has reached quite a fever pitch in recent weeks. Regardless of the exciting and/or contrived cliffhanger, I'm personally more interested in seeing what elseThe Walking Dead Season 7 will bring into the fold.

The good news is that fans will not have too much longer to wait to catch the new episodes. The Walking Dead can be viewed on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET, starting on October 23. To find out what other shows have yet to hit the schedule, take a look at our fall TV premiere guide. In addition, you can find out what we know about Season 7, here.